


Perhaps

by LadyKes



Series: Different Perspectives [4]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-25 23:49:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9852509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyKes/pseuds/LadyKes
Summary: Jack considers an event in his past - and the possibility that he may actually have met Miss Phryne Fisher before 1928 after all. Flashback story to WWI.  Companion toThink Carefully.





	

**Author's Note:**

> It’s my one-year fandaversary, so here’s a different perspective on the very first fic I wrote for this fandom.

Perhaps he’d always known.

He’d considered it a few times. On the one hand, it was said that everyone had a doppelganger in the world. Even without that, he’d had more than one case involving previously unknown relatives cross his desk. He had thus told himself very firmly that it was just a coincidence.

But somewhere deep in his mind and his heart, he thought maybe he’d always known, from the moment he’d seen The Honorably Frustrating Miss Phryne Fisher stepping fashionably all over his crime scene. 

\----

It had been his second assignment. He still didn’t know how his name had come to the attention of those smoke-filled rooms, but he’d been told it was because he was trained as a copper. Attention to detail was essential in this business as well as that, they’d said. He wasn’t sure he believed them, but he knew better than to ask too many questions. And it got him out of the god-forsaken trenches now and again, so he couldn’t complain too much.

The allies had deciphered intelligence on the potential movement of the enemy thanks to a codebook found on the body of a radio operator, but the information was too sensitive to trust to their own trench codes, which they knew the Huns were devilishly good at breaking. There was also the minor difficulty that half their radio operators and wireless equipment were dead or damaged. No, this information had to be delivered in person. Jack wasn’t sure who’d come up with the exact idea for how to get him from one field hospital to another, but he would admit it was creative in a rather macabre way.

He went over the plan with Commandant Coyea until both men were satisfied that it was as good as it could be, then the Commandant called a runner in and whispered in the lad’s ear. The lad saluted painfully correctly and disappeared before Commandant Coyea motioned to a chair in the corner of the tent. Jack moved it further into the corner as Coyea turned the flame on the oil lamp down. He didn’t speak. Neither did Coyea. The next few minutes were too important for that. Their plan had one more potential wrinkle, and he could only hope that Coyea was correct in his assessment of whoever he’d sent the lad to get.

A light, cultured voice called out to the Commandant and Jack saw the man smile before he invited the woman to enter.

His first impression of the Sister was that she was too pale. Too pale and too thin, with a weariness around her eyes that spoke of long months fighting death. They were beautiful eyes, though, and in some ways he wondered that he even noticed that anymore. But perhaps in the general absence of beauty, he had become more appreciative of it when it appeared. 

She greeted the commandant with a smile even as he saw her eyes darting around the tent. He was certain she couldn’t see his features, but he turned his face further into the dark corner of the tent all the same. It would be pitiful if his second assignment was his last because he was stupid enough to show his face when he shouldn’t.

“Sister, I thank you for your promptness,” Commandant Coyea said. If it had been another situation, he thought the man might have kissed her hand. She had that sort of bearing.

“Of course, Commandant,” she replied graciously. “What can I do for you?”

“I think it is more what you can do for us,” he said, and her eyes flashed to his corner before focusing on the Commandant. 

“What can I do for you both, then?” she said calmly, and he decided he liked this Sister already. Still, the important part of the conversation was yet to come. 

“This man - I think we will call him John Smith - must deliver a message,” Commandant Coyea said, motioning to him. The Sister raised an eyebrow at Coyea, possibly because that was the worst alias anyone could ever have thought of, and the Commandant shrugged fluidly. It was what it was. 

“And I suppose he can’t deliver it in the usual ways?” the woman suggested. She tilted her head to the side, but kept her eyes focused on the Commandant rather than on Jack.

“No, that is not possible,” the Commandant said firmly. “So we would like your help. You do not have to agree. If you do not agree, you may leave this tent and we will speak no more about it. Think carefully, Sister.”

It was dangerous for her, even more dangerous than it was for him. She was a noncombatant, or she was until this moment, and the Huns had been rumored to execute nurses for espionage or suspected espionage. She could face a firing squad for this if it all went wrong, and he was sure she knew that.

“What do you need, Commandant Coyea?” she replied confidently after far less time than Jack thought most people would need to consider that kind of decision. Jack relaxed into his chair with relief and saw the Commandant’s face show similar relief. This might actually work, and it was all to do with the bravery of a woman he didn’t even know. But that was how it went in war. Little moments of bravery made all the difference sometimes.

Coyea explained the plan in even more detail than he’d hashed it out with Jack, but they needed her to understand exactly what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. Even with the best planning, things could so easily go wrong. Jack didn’t speak, but he did confirm or disagree with a few statements, and he saw her eyes dart to him each time he did. He thought he would remember those eyes for a long time. 

The next morning, he put on the worst uniform the Matron could find, which still reeked of the Digger it’d been taken off of. He smeared mud and muck on his face until he smelled awful and looked worse, then carefully lay down in the back of a horse-drawn carriage. All around him were the bodies of other lads that would never go home, and that made him even more determined to deliver this intelligence. If he could allow even one more lad to go home to his sweetheart, it would be worth it.

As he waited for the Sister to arrive, he considered that there was nothing of substance he could tell Rosie this week. Again. He couldn’t explain anything about this assignment, of course, nor would he anyway. Knowing that he’d lain in a wagon surrounded by corpses would distress her, and reading that the one bit of beauty in his week was another woman’s eyes would hurt her. So it was to be another stilted, staid letter that only made the distance between them seem larger, and in return hers would be just as stilted. He longed to see her again, to hold her, to explain what he could in person, but even as he thought that, he knew there was no explaining it. 

The Sister arrived, bringing with her the faintest scent of perfume, and he closed his eyes almost all the way. Through the narrowest of slits, he saw her glance over all the faces in the wagon with compassion. He marveled that she could still find any after all this. She covered all their faces with a sheet and he heard her climb into the front seat of the wagon before she chirruped to the horse and they went on their bumpy way.

Later in life, he had nightmares about that trip. It seemed like they stopped at a checkpoint or for shelling every half kilometer. Each time, the Sister spoke to the sentries or dived down by the side of the wagon. The worst was the checkpoint that clearly didn’t think bodies would actually be transported from one hospital to another and that there must be some other reason the Sister was driving the wagon. They were right, of course, but his admiration for the Sister grew as she argued with the sentries in the saltiest French he’d ever heard from a man or a woman. She insulted their mothers, their ancestors, and all their gods for their idea that they needed to examine the bodies of lads who had already died horribly so far from home. Despite her best efforts, she wasn’t able to convince them not to prove it to themselves that she was doing something other than relieving the overcrowding in a morgue. He held his breath as a bayonet started stabbing through the sheet. It got close enough to poke another hole in his sleeve, but no closer, and eventually they let the wagon pass.

After a few moments, the wagon slowed and he nearly groaned. Not another checkpoint, he prayed, not so soon after the first. Instead he heard her voice.

“Êtes-vous vivant?” she called worriedly, and he couldn’t resist a small chuckle.

“Oui,” he replied simply. He knew his French had a distinctly Aussie twang to it, even in that one word, and he knew he probably shouldn’t have even said that, but she was clearly so worried about him and had defended the bodily integrity of the lads around him so fiercely that he thought it was worth that small lapse. 

He could tell they’d reached the other field hospital because he heard more English, but he wasn’t safe yet. He stayed in his place, unmoving, trying not to breathe through his nose, until the Sister meeting them gave the proper passphrase.

“An unfortunate load for you, Sister.” The Sister spoke the passphrase coolly, though she couldn’t know whether they were being met by the right person. 

“They’re all unfortunate.” 

He heard what he was going to think of as his Sister climbing down and then the sheet was removed. He did his best to seem like a dead weight as he was carried into the dark morgue, which smelled even worse than the wagon. 

His plank was conveniently next to a flap at the back of the tent and he knew that was the way he’d be leaving the morgue. After a few moments of silence, he opened his eyes and saw his chauffeur silhouetted in the light of the front flap of the tent. Lit like this and considering what she’d done today, he thought he could be forgiven for thinking of her as an angel - his angel. 

He fixed the image in his mind, hoping it would sustain him through whatever hell the future had in store for him, and then she spoke. 

“Go with whatever god you believe in, Mr. Smith, if you can still believe in one after all this.”

It would have taken a better man than he not to speak to her after that heartfelt wish. But what could he say? Thank you seemed so inadequate. Compliments would be ridiculous. Perhaps the simplest answer was the best.

“And you, Sister.”

He wasn’t sure why, but something about his three word answer arrested her. She paused for just one more moment and he thought she might say more, but then she turned away. The flap closed, and he was left alone in the darkness of the morgue. After what seemed like a safe interval, he slipped out the back and went to deliver his message, but his Sister stayed in his mind for the rest of that day.

\----

So many years later, he sat in The Honorable Miss Phryne Fisher’s parlor. They’d bantered and gently flirted, as they did, and she’d plied him with Mr. Butler’s cocktails, but he could tell that something was on her excellent mind.

“Jack,” she began. It wasn’t her wheedling voice or her flirtatious voice or even her sensible voice. Instead it was her solving a puzzle voice. He looked at her attentively, tipping his head to one side in a gesture that she would know meant he was waiting for whatever outrageous thing was about to come out of her mouth this time. 

“The case with Mr. Spall some weeks ago.”

Now he really didn’t know what she was talking about. That case hadn’t been the highest point in their partnership, though he still believed he’d been justified in trying to pull back from the heartache and headache that was sure to follow loving Phryne Fisher. 

“I’m not going to ask any questions that would violate the Official Secrets Act,” she said slowly.

“I would hope not, Miss Fisher,” he noted repressively. He felt very strongly about the various oaths and vows he’d taken in his life, including that one.

“That case, though - it was an unfortunate load, wasn’t it?” she asked quietly, and his world did its best to realign itself. Again. Phryne Fisher had a talent for doing that to him. 

She couldn’t have known the passcode unless she was the Sister in the morgue, and suddenly all his musings, all his late-night convictions that he was just placing on her the burden of being involved in a difficult moment in his life, all of them fell into place. Her beautiful eyes hadn’t changed. Nor had her fondness for perfume and her determination to do whatever she needed to do to accomplish an end. 

“They’re all unfortunate, Miss Fisher,” he replied, and raised his martini to her. 

Fifteen years on, and she was still his angel. Perhaps he’d always known.


End file.
